How Wilfred Owen conveys the horror and futility of war “My subject is war and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity.” A quote by one of the greatest war poet of all time, Wilfred Owen, shows his attitude towards poetry, a medium he used to portray the chaos of war. In his poetry, he depicts the horror and futility of war that he witnessed. His poetry, which lies in the ‘pity of war’, stirs the emotions of the reader beyond just sympathy. The way Owen crafts the poem clearly shows the ‘pity’ that he emphasizes throughout his poetry.
In the poem, “The Man He Killed,” by Thomas Hardy, he illustrates the theme of inhumanity and disgust that is consequential of war, by comparing two men, who could be grown together and are now fighting against each other for someone else’s cause. Feelings towards other people can also take a negative or positive role in real life whether it is a war or a normal life crime; people hurt each other in the way that can cause them to make a certain decision. Throughout the poem, Hardy uses the techniques of tone and word choice to get his ideas across the poem and focuses on the senselessness and futility of war, where a man has killed another because they were fighting on the opposite side of the war. In the beginning, there are many references to different ways that the speaker could have met his
Both Dulce et Decorum Est and Mametz Wood present the incompetent results of war. Dulce et Decorum Est indicates the horrible facts and deaths in war. Moreover, Mametz Wood highlights how precious life is and how easily it can be lost as a result of battle. In this poem “Dulce et decorum Est”, Owen portrays the deadly effects of conflict through the use of metaphor: “as under a green sea, I saw him drowning”. Here, he describes the pain of the gas attack.
The first line of the first stanza, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks” uses a simile to compare the state of the soldiers to beggars; unkempt and dirty. Disgust and repulsiveness is instantly evoked, along with an image of old men with hunched backs and ragged dirty clothes, although they were supposed to be young and dashing. A similar effect can be seen on the seventh line of the fourth stanza, “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud”. This quote contains two similes, both comparing the scene of the soldier dying to the horrifying and repulsive aspect of cancer and cud. By comparing the situation to cancer, Owen is comparing it to a loathsome disease that brings suffering, and by comparing the situation to cud; half chewed food, Owen is expressing his disgust towards the way the soldier is dying.
The effects of romanticized wars are seen throughout Slaughterhouse Five and All Quiet on the Western Front. The false visions of war that soldiers blindly go into mentally destroy them little by little. For the women and men back home, the families, their ideas of what their loved one is going through is constantly changing with the novels and movies romanticizing war and the war heroes. Kurt Vonnegut has said before that he believes civilization was terminated in World War I and that "Much of the blame is the malarkey that artist have created to glorify war, which we all know, is nonsense, and a good deal worse that that –romantic pictures of battle, and of the dead men in uniform and all that" (Vitale par. 4).
The tone of this poem is more foreboding and condemnatory, not only describing the training soldiers but outright degrading their forced involvement as morally wrong. With themes rooted in the brutality of warfare and loss of innocence, both “The Last Laugh” and “Arms and the Boy” express similar messages but in different contexts. Just as before, Owen continues to personify weapons to emphasize their true role as the war mongers rather than the soldiers themselves. Owen states, “this bayonet-blade…keen with hunger of blood” (Owen 1-2). Uniquely when compared to other instances, this use of personification explicitly defines a blade as having a hunger for blood and a desire to kill, which is implemented upon the soldier who wields it.
In conclusion, Owen created an anti-poem war that aimed to convey “the pity of war”. He effectively does this by using very sympathetic and descriptive words. He makes the soldier's life sound dreadful through isolation, regret, rejection, immaturity and the painful remembrance of
The poem 's diction keeps emphasizing on death and the horrors of it which is intense. The era that this poem was written in influenced the tone because at that time no matter if the battle is won or lost the soldiers who sacrificed themselves should be honored no matter what, and should be acknowledged. In Mary Borden’s The Song of The Mud, the tone is sarcastic and ironic but still gruesome about war and going into the wars, the title of this poem is a great example of how ironic Mary is about war; in this title the reader would infer “song” is joyful and positive but then “mud” is negative and unpleasant. She believes that wars strip soldiers of their value and that no human being should experience the horrors of
Owen was taken out of the war where he began writing poems. He wrote his poems to show both his anger at the cruelty and waste of war. (BBC) Owen used this poem to show the misconception that war is. While people outside of the war thought it was honorable, soldiers like Owen himself, know how cruel and it really is. Through the use of imagery, figurative language, and tone, Owen is able to portray the misconception and cruelty of war.
The two war poets Wilfred Owen and WH Auden both spectate different wars but presented the horrors of war; alienation, loss and desolation in their poems. Although “Refugee Blues” and “Disabled” both signify the same theme, each poet uses different techniques and styles to depict the leitmotif of their poem. The images portrayed in both poems give a great sense of tragedy and loss from different perspectives. Although the soldier is still living, he has to now experience a life of melancholy, solitude and adversity. Moreover, the tragedy in “Refugee Blues” is also a great loss as we realize how discernible discrimination was.